Chapter 28
Zara
Despite my exhaustion that night, I had a hard time falling asleep.
I’d hidden my reaction from Talon, but Altair’s words had shaken me.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, running his reactions through my mind over and over.
I could think of only one other person who’d suffered something like that, but I’d never forget the signs.
A daughter in our camp had a twin sister who had died, and afterward, she’d lost all sense of reality in her grief.
She continued to see and speak to her sister as though she were alive, which had taken some getting used to, but was relatively harmless.
But she wasn’t an emperor of an entire people, and one who hadn’t lost a beloved sister, but instead, a sadistic father.
What might this ghost of the past emperor be telling his son?
It made me think of when Altair had brought me to that inner sanctuary, and he’d said his father was never wrong.
I’d thought at the time that it was strange to speak of his father in the present tense, but that maybe it was just a slip of the tongue.
Now, though, it seemed that he believed he could still see and speak to his father.
Not good considering how much his father had hated my people.
And Lord Heron…even the thought of his name made my skin crawl. He was clearly manipulating Altair into thinking that Talon and I were doing something inappropriate together, which was ridiculous.
Is it though? my mind taunted me.
I thought of Talon’s smile, the way the wind blew through his dark hair, the sunlight on his skin. I covered my face in my hands.
“I hate this place,” I said with a groan.
But the way Talon and I may or may not have felt toward each other wasn’t the real problem right now.
Altair would never willingly break his alliance with Ozul.
And even if we managed to destroy that demonic creature, I didn’t think I’d be able to uphold my end of the treaty.
We would need to renegotiate, considering none of us had known that Altair had allied himself with a monster.
More than anything, though, I desperately wanted to see Ama. I craved her wisdom and guidance, but at the same time, I knew she would never sanction this plan to confront the Devourer. Not when I wanted to use the power of the wind against it.
First chance I got, I was going to see Ama in person. She needed to know what was really happening here. And she owed me answers about my sire. Answers that I realized now she’d long kept a secret.
Assuming I lived through the battle with the Devourer, that is.
With that comforting thought in mind, I finally drifted off to sleep.
I awoke to a dark room, the fire having burned low, and clouds blocking most of the three-quarter-full moon.
Waking in the middle of the night had become my new normal here, but I immediately knew this night was different.
My heart slammed repeatedly against my chest as though I had awoken in the midst of a nightmare.
I had this terrible sense that something watched me from the darkness.
My eyes scanned the room, landing repeatedly on the deep shadows.
“Future Empress?” a voice called, familiar and yet slightly distorted, like the speaker had something caught in their throat. It came from the shadows.
I sat up in bed. “Raven?”
Shuffling footsteps, and then Raven moved into what little light came from the window.
I let out a low groan of horror and threw myself out of bed.
I immediately saw why her voice sounded strange.
Her throat had a gaping, jagged wound where the blood had blackened over time.
She looked at me with black-rimmed eyes, her scraggly, blood-soaked hair hanging in her face.
The legends were true. The Devourer could turn people into walking corpses, and somehow she had gotten into my locked room. Fear paralyzed me. I couldn’t even cry out.
She shambled to me, her clothes covered in that black blood and hanging from her in tatters. She kept her hands out, fingers curled into claws. I held my dagger at the ready, slowly backing away from her.
“Please don’t do this, Raven,” I said.
She didn’t answer, only continued in that unnatural gait.
I dashed past Raven, but she lunged faster than I expected and latched onto my arm.
Her clawed fingers dug deep, past skin and into muscle.
I screamed as she tore a gash into my forearm.
With the other, I brought my dagger down, driving it deep into her chest with a terrible crunching sound. It did nothing to stop her.
With tremendous strength, she grabbed me and threw me to the ground.
Before I could gain my footing again, she was on me like a rabid animal.
Her yellowed teeth snapped inches from my face as I struggled to keep her from biting me.
Her clawed hands tore my skin, and I screamed in pain.
From my door, I heard a repeated slamming sound, and it rattled on its hinges.
Talon, I thought and remembered that the door was still barred shut.
Before I could call out to him for help, Raven opened her mouth again, and black shadows poured out. They engulfed me, thick as fog.
The wind.
It was there, just outside my window. It would burst through the glass and come to my aid.
Agony ripped through me again as she clawed me, and my panic blinded me.
She came at me again, grabbing hold of my arms, her dirty nails digging into my flesh.
I cried out. I couldn’t think—couldn’t focus enough to call the wind.
“I need your strength,” Raven said in a voice that sounded like her own but deeper. Her fetid breath blew in my face as I struggled to free myself.
And then suddenly, Raven flew through the air. Her body crashed against the wall. The shadows receded rapidly, and Talon was there, his face murderous. He stood above me like a vengeful god.
“Zara, are you hurt?” he asked, his face twisted with worry as his eyes scanned my body for injuries.
While he focused on me, Raven got to her feet again.
“Behind you!”
Talon turned with his sword raised. Raven launched herself at him. In one clean motion, he severed her head from her body.
My former maidservant fell to the floor in a heap, finally still.
“Can you stand?” Talon asked, and when I nodded, he bent down and carefully helped me to my feet. I stood there shaking so hard my teeth chattered, and Talon instantly pulled me against his warm chest. He wrapped strong arms around me and gently rubbed my back.
“Skies, Zara,” Talon said, letting out a sharp breath. “How did that thing get in here?”
“She came out of the shadows while I was sleeping,” I said shakily, my skin breaking out in goose bumps as I remembered my sudden nightmarish awakening. “She was my missing maidservant—Raven.”
He tensed around me. “Then the legends are true. The Devourer did this.” He pulled back, sweeping his gaze over my body. “Are you hurt?”
“Just my arms,” I said. My arms were shredded where Raven had dug her sharp nails into them, and blood poured from the wounds. I thought of the shadows that came from inside her. It could have been so much worse.
“Do you want me to send for a healer? These wounds need treatment to prevent festering.”
When he moved like he was about to leave, I grabbed hold of his wrist. “No, please stay. I can clean it myself.”
It may have been child-afraid-of-the-dark level of fear, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being left alone right now.
“You sure you’re not hurt anywhere else?”
“Just here,” I confirmed.
“Thank the skies,” he said, closing his eyes in obvious relief. Gently, he guided me over to one of the chairs in the sitting room. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner—the door was boarded from the inside, and I had to break it down.” His jaw tightened. “I was terrified I wouldn’t make it in time.”
“You did, though,” I said with a shudder as I looked at poor Raven.
If he was as disturbed as I felt, he hid it well. “Did she say anything?”
“She called my name, and then she said, ‘I need your strength.’ ”
He nodded thoughtfully. “When I broke through the door, you looked like you were shrouded in shadows. I could barely see you.”
“It wanted my power,” I said with another shudder.
“It’s getting more desperate,” Talon said with another glance at Raven’s broken body. She didn’t so much as twitch.
“I think it was trying to use Raven to catch me unawares, and admittedly, I didn’t want to hurt her. Even when she looked like…that.”
“You hesitated, and she hurt you,” he said, and for a moment, he sounded like General Isa scolding me for not firing my bow fast enough. “But I should have been here to stop her,” he added with a frown. “Next time I won’t make the same mistake.”
“What are you supposed to do? Sleep in here with me?”
He gave me a look that said that was exactly what he planned to do. Despite everything, heat bloomed across my cheeks.
“I’ll get something to clean and bandage your wounds,” he said before disappearing into my bathing area and coming back with a pile of clean cloths, fresh water, wraps for bandaging, and some sort of strong-smelling ointment.
“This may sting a bit,” he warned before proceeding to gently clean out the gouges in my left arm, where it was the worst.
Pain burned through me like being clawed all over again, but I refused to make a sound when he was trying so hard not to hurt me.
His calloused fingers brushed over my skin so softly, and as I looked down at the prominent tendons on his strong hands, I was struck by the way this skilled warrior could still be so gentle.
I watched his face as he concentrated, my eyes tracing the line of his jaw.
He was heart-stoppingly handsome, but it was more than that.
Even though we had once been enemies, he was always there when I needed him.
I sucked in my breath when my eyes dropped to his plush lips.